Landmarks Panel Votes to Protect 2 Upper East Side Tenements

Image

The buildings of First Avenue Estates, on York Avenue between 64th and 65th Streets, were constructed between 1898 and 1915 with courtyards that allowed light and air into apartments.CreditChester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

They might look more abandoned than historic, but two tenements on the Upper East Side will remain standing: New York City’s landmarks board on Tuesday denied the owner permission to tear them down.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously against the demolition request by the Stahl Organization, which has sought for decades to replace the pair of six-story apartment buildings, on York Avenue between 64th and 65th Streets, with a luxury high-rise. The buildings were designated landmarks in 2006 as a testament to early tenement development on the Upper East Side, but Stahl argued that it could not achieve a reasonable return on the 190 apartments — one of the few grounds under which a designated landmark can be demolished.

But the commissioners agreed that not only could the property be profitable, but also that if there was any hardship, it was of Stahl’s own making, since about two-thirds of the apartments are vacant. The commission also rejected Stahl’s analysis that the units, which average 370 square feet, could fetch only $600 a month, saying its own study showed they could get at least $869 and probably more.

“There is something quite illogical to a landlord who claims rents are too low but does not make any attempt to rent the apartments,” the commission chairman, Robert B. Tierney, said. “This makes no sense on its face, unless there’s another intention at work, such as to develop the buildings.”

A spokesman for Stahl said the developer, who controls some five million square feet of property in the city, intended to appeal the decision. Most of the apartments have been left vacant because Stahl has long intended to tear the buildings down, the spokesman, Brian Maddox, said. “We think that these assumptions, plus the expert opinions relied upon by the L.P.C., are wholly erroneous and entirely misleading,” he said. “They will be challenged in court.”

The buildings, known as the First Avenue Estates, were constructed by the City and Suburban Homes Company between 1898 and 1915 to provide a hospitable alternative to the squalid cold-water flats prevalent at the time. The buildings’ courtyards provided light and air, with at least two exposures in every room.

At the time, they made up the largest privately built development of its kind.

Margery Perlmutter, a landmarks commissioner, said that in many respects, despite their deterioration at the hands of their owner, these apartments “surpass in quality some of the finest prewar buildings on Park Avenue, and the City and Suburban units are brighter and more better ventilated than many apartments being built today.”

The remaining tenants, about a dozen of whom attended the hearing on Tuesday, broke out into applause after the final vote was cast. Their concern now is whether the buildings will ever be restored to the grandeur so many commissioners spoke of.

“We look like a ghetto now,” said Kaitlin Griffith, a resident since 1984, “but the beauty is still there, waiting to be awakened.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Landmarks Panel Votes to Protect 2 Upper East Side Tenements. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe